“So what? At least I do care about others.”
“Oh, hey, below the belt, or what. There have been a lot of girls I cared for in the last few years. More than you.”
“More, yes. But none of them for very long, eh, Bruce?”
“Doesn’t need to be long, just thorough. Now come on, Romeo, time we got ready.”
“Yes.” Kazimir took one last longing look at the thick swath of stars, then followed Bruce as he skidded his way down the dune. Directly ahead of them was StOmer, the great mountain that marked the most northeasterly point of the Dessault range.
“Did it help?” Bruce asked, serious for once. Or as serious as he could be. They’d reached the broad ridge of crumbling sandstone where there was a tunnel to the clan’s Rock Dee fort.
“Did what help?”
“Thinking about her?”
“Some. Yes. I know that what we’re defending is worthwhile.” Kazimir ducked his head to step under what looked like a deep overhang. The tunnel was underneath, hidden from the sky, barely wide enough for one person. He tucked his shoulders in, and scraped his way forward, the once-gritty sandstone on either side now smooth as marble from the passage of so many bodies over the decades. The tunnel bent twice, following a sharp S-curve. Thirty meters from the entrance it opened out into the first of the wide chambers that formed Rock Dee fort. The guard, standing proud in her lavender and tangerine McMixon kilt, studied his face, then allowed him to pass. If the Institute soldiers did ever find the tunnel, any guard would be able to hold them off just about single-handed as they wriggled their way out of the narrow slit one by one.
Polyphoto strips had been epoxied to the roof, with long strings of black electrical cable stretched out between them. Their relentless sol-spectrum light etched deep shadows across the rumpled sandstone as they led deeper into the fort.
“She must have been phenomenal in bed,” Bruce said with apparent sympathy. “I mean, the two of you only had, what, a couple of days together? And you’re still moping about her.”
“Sometimes, I almost wish you’d met her.”
“Almost?”
“If you’d seen her, got to know her, you would understand this isn’t some easy infatuation like the ones you have. And I would have wanted my two closest friends to meet.”
“Oh… well, thanks, Kaz.”
“But I thank all the heavens you didn’t, because you’re such an embarrassment I’m sure she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with anyone who knew you.”
Bruce made a lunge for him. A laughing Kazimir dodged ahead and started running. The pair of them burst out into the fort’s main chamber, still taunting and insulting each other loudly. Heads swung around to check out what was happening. Some frowned at the flippancy of the youths at such a time. Others—those of a similar age—smiled tolerantly. Most simply turned back to their work.
Kazimir and Bruce put on their sober faces, slowed down, and nodded courteously at their fellow clansmen. The rocky cavern had been carved in the rough shape of a football amphitheater by storm waters now long gone from this side of the mountains. Two fast channels had once merged here, swirling around and around as they clashed before rushing out toward the northeastern lowlands. The surging waters also had eroded a host of smaller passages and caves, tributaries that had splintered and shifted as geology took over from hydropressure.
Rock Dee was one of the largest Guardian communities, and a formidable safe refuge. There was still fresh water to be found in the lower caverns, filtering in from the mountains that guarded the desert above. Solid-state heat exchange cables had been sunk deep into the mantle below, providing power for lighting and cooking, along with the more important task of supplying the armory with electricity. All that had to be brought in was food, and that was supplied by the McKratz clan’s farms and grazing lands scattered throughout the Dessault range.
Kazimir felt a surge of pride at what he saw in the big chamber. If only he could have brought Justine to see this, then she would have believed in the Guardians’ purpose. Over eighty fighters were busy on the chamber floor, making up one of the largest raiding parties the Guardians of Selfhood had put together in years. But then, as everyone here knew, events were picking up with the construction of the human starship. The Starflyer’s long-laid plans were maturing rapidly, bringing disaster and death to the Commonwealth from the one direction no one in authority was looking.
All the clans had contributed to the raid. McFosters had provided a dozen young fighters, who were checking over their packs and equipment. Their emerald and copper kilts had been packed away; this evening they wore their navy-blue and ebony hunter tartan, helping them pass unseen through the night.
The McNowaks, also predominantly fighters, were in their gray and brown tartan. A group of them were engaged assessing the armor worn by one of their captains. The blue skeletal suit flooded the air around him with a nebulous orange haze, as if he were standing inside a ghostly amoeba. The radiance crackled and intensified each time a test penetrator cane was applied against him. With each application the force field emitter was gradually tuned until the emanation was nothing more than a faint aural outline, the kind any Old Testament saint might possess. Fine-tuning inverted the radiance, cloaking him in a skin of absorptive shadow.
The McOnnas were the third clan to focus on the soldier ethic. Their nomadic boys and girls were undergoing the same lessons, training, and tests that Kazimir himself had gone through. All of them he knew he could trust as much as Bruce. All were totally loyal to the cause, prepared to give their lives that humanity could be liberated. The squad they’d sent were wearing their nightguard blue and vermilion kilts, along with dark leather travel jackets; ion pistol holster and harmonic blade knife sheaths hung from their belts.
The McMixons, who were charged with the keeping of Rock Dee and other forts in the countryside surrounding the Institute, were tending to the Charlemagnes, the warhorses they would all ride to the raid. The gene-modified beasts were fully twenty-one hands, carried by legs like small tree trunks. They had no mane or tail; their thick leather hide was tougher than rhino skin, and a similar dull slate-gray in color. A short unicorn spike rose out of their heads, tipped with carbon-bonded titanium blades by the Rock Dee smithy. Any unprotected human caught by one would be ripped in half; and even force field armor had been known to give way from the inertia of a full charge. Fat iron bolts had been driven through the tough shield ridges of bone that protected the neck and underbelly, and straps of leather and silicon threaded through hoops in the bolts to hold the saddle in place. The Charlemagnes had been designed by the Barsoomians in their lands away to the east of the Oak Sea. Not for money—an emblem of the culture to which the radical ecogeneticists were fiercely aversive—but for the challenge of engendering an animal that in symbiosis with humans had only one purpose: carnage. The Barsoomians probably even delved into the forbidden field of psychoneural profiling, for no clan fighter had ever known a Charlemagne to shy away skittishly in the heat of battle like an ordinary horse would. With their tough skin, triple hearts, and multiple stress loading pathway skeleton, the great beasts were inordinately difficult to kill even with modern weapons.
The McPeierls, the widest-roaming clan of all, gathered intelligence on Institute activities from all over the planet. They also collected the advanced equipment that Johansson smuggled through the gateway along hundreds of innocuous routes. This evening, their members were distributing the final pieces of technology and weaponry required by the raiders.
The McKratzes farmed and raised cattle out across Far Away’s sweeping plains and tricky mountain pastures. They were the ones who bred the Charlemagne herds and lynxhound packs, and other domestic animals used by the clans. Throughout the year, they insured the more nomadic clans were fed and supplied.
And everywhere in the main cavern moved the McSobels, the armorer clan, responsible as well for general technology. Lugging their test equipment over the rock floor, they stopped beside each fighter and warhorse, running test programs through the arrays. Scarlet superconductor cables were pulled about behind them, supplying top-up charges to batteries and weapons magazines. Seven of them had been assigned to the raid, dressed in kilts that were matte-black with a plain grid pattern of thin dark gray lines and equally black coats. Five were bringing the missile launchers and medium-caliber plasma cannon, bulky titanium-cased units hanging from their Charlemagnes, which didn’t even seem to notice the extra weight. The remaining two operated electronic warfare systems intended to neutralize the Institute communications and throw in as much confusion and false data as possible.
Walking up to his own warhorse, Kraken, Kazimir felt the gooseflesh rising as the prospect of the coming raid grew more real. The Charlemagne snorted like a small thunderstorm, lifting and turning its head slightly so it could watch him walk around to its flank. Kazimir had absolutely no instinct to pat the creature reassuringly, this was nothing like the normal ponies and horses he’d learned to ride on. It was enough that the beast didn’t try to bite his head off on sight; the carnivore tusks curving over its rubbery lips were thicker than his fingers.
He began to check his pack once more.
“So are you two screwups ready?” a rasping voice asked.
Kazimir smiled around at Harvey McFoster, his old tutor. The man was a veteran of many clan raids against the Institute, and had the scars to prove it. Years ago, an ion beam fired by an Institute soldier had vaporized a superconductor battery beside him, and the superenergized molecules had penetrated his armor force field. After his injury, he spent his time teaching rather than fighting. He was lucky he survived the toxic shock. Clan medics spent six months repairing as much tissue as they could; even so the skin on a third of his body now had a melted appearance, and he could never raise his voice to shout. Not that he needed to, his presence alone inspired awe in his pupils. Kazimir considered himself privileged to have been one.
“Doing my best to be ready,” he said.
“Good enough,” Harvey said. “And you, Bruce, are you scared yet?”
“Ha.” Bruce gave the ion pistol on his belt a confident pat. “No, sir.”
Harvey’s cheek muscles moved his too-thick skin into a grimace, looking even more like some Halloween grotesque. “If you had a brain, lad, you would be.”
Bruce’s eternal cockiness vanished.
“Be nervous,” Harvey said. “Their soldiers are trying to kill you, or worse. Fright is your friend, it keeps you alert. That gives you a chance out there.”
“Only heroes are fearless,” Kazimir said. “And they die young.”
“I’m glad you heard something I said,” Harvey told him. “Even if it is just an old lyric.”
“We’ll make you proud,” Bruce insisted.
Harvey’s hand closed on his shoulder. “I know you will, lad, although I’d prefer it if you just stay alive. Remember, keep your eyes focused in front of you the whole time, not on your dick.” He gave a labored wink toward the McNowak group, then walked off.
Kazimir and Bruce smiled at each other in the same way as they had when they got caught playing truant. Bruce lifted his pack up and fastened it behind his saddle. “He’s right, you know.”
“I know. We mustn’t let our attention slip.”
“No, you idiot, about them.”
“Huh?” Kazimir followed the line his friend was surreptitiously indicating. Four of the McNowak fighters were young women. Kazimir had even chatted with a couple of them yesterday when they arrived in Rock Dee.
“That one with the dark hair, she hasn’t stopped looking at you since we came in.”
“Andria?”
“Oh, ho, you already know her name. Quick work, my friend. So who’s the one next to her? I wouldn’t mind a tumble with her after the raid.”
“That’s Bethany. I think she’s paired with one of the McOnnas. And anyway, what about Samantha? It’s only another month until she’s due, right?”